W6 - Installations at NGV International

I went to look at two installations at the weekend:

Master Tetsunori Kawana (Japan) 2009: Five Elements Water, and
Bill Viola (USA) 2007: Ocean without a Shore

Both watery, but using very different ways to represent water and its meanings, the former being a vast bamboo and wire construction that I read as a frozen tsunami draining into NGV's restaurant and the latter an equally large-scale 90 minute video of the comings and goings of the dead through a veil of water that separates this mode of existence from the next.

Here is a quick walk around Five Elements Water using my Motorola phone:

Here are a couple of typical clips from Ocean Without a Shore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyMWn8ebItU

This one gives more of an impression of the audience experience as the amateur footage moves between the three screens each with their comings and goings of the dead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beMhIoeGQzQ&feature=related

I think both clips are amateur footage, so complete copyright infringements, but do give some sort of record for educational purposes.